Editing Spaceflight (section)

=== Point-to-point ===
Point-to-point, or Earth to Earth transportation, is a category of [[sub-orbital spaceflight]] in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations.<ref name="nsp_ete">
{{cite web
 |url=https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/12/earth-to-earth-supersonic-airliners/
 |title=Preparing for "Earth to Earth" space travel and a competition with supersonic airliners
 |last=Burghardt 
 |first=Thomas
 |date=December 26, 2020
 |website=NASA Spaceflight
 |access-date=January 29, 2021
 |quote=The most prevalent concept for suborbital Earth to Earth transportation comes from none other than Elon Musk and SpaceX. Primarily designed for transporting large payloads to Mars for the purpose of colonization, the next generation Starship launch system offers a bonus capability for transporting large amounts of cargo around Earth.
}}
</ref> A conventional airline route between [[London]] and [[Sydney]], a flight that normally lasts [[Non-stop flight#Future of ultra long-haul|over twenty hours]], could be traversed in less than one hour.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/making_life_multiplanetary_transcript_2017.pdf | title=Becoming a Multiplanetary Species | date=29 September 2017 | series=68th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia | publisher=SpaceX | access-date=15 April 2018 | archive-date=8 August 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180808022709/http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/making_life_multiplanetary_transcript_2017.pdf | url-status=dead }}</ref> While no company offers this type of transportation today, [[SpaceX]] has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using [[SpaceX Starship|Starship]]. Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit.<ref>{{cite web|first=David |last=Hoerr |url=http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1118/1 |title=Point-to-point suborbital transportation: sounds good on paper, but… |work=The Space Review |date=May 5, 2008 |access-date=November 5, 2013}}</ref> If rockets are used, the size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmospheric re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight.